An Aid To Memory

I was at a contentious meeting last night, which was called by a few of the more liberal church members upset at the direction our local parish was going. I was on the orthodox side, and agree with the direction, which involves joining the new Anglican network. In typical Anglican fashion the meeting was civil, although I was troubled with how politely folks can spew slander and malice.

One lady in particular at this meeting pointed toward "Anglican broadness," which used to be considered a strength of Anglicanism. Queen Elizabeth I was a champion of this general broadness, and did not care what a person believed inside, so long as he or she conformed in outside matters. Then this particular lady went on to speak of how Anglo-Catholics, Evangelicals,and liberals have lived side-by-side for years, under one big umbrella, singing "Give Peace a Chance" and holding hands…well…not the last two, but you get the point.

I wondered about a few things. First, I thought, where are the evangelicals and anglo-catholics? Especially where are those whose vision for the church is not broad? In the USA, and in most of Western Anglicanism, they are gone..they quite wisely hit the road a long time ago when they realized their visions were doomed. Then I began to question the broadness of the Episcopal Church, where Anglo-Catholic bishops no longer have a conscience clause allowing them to not ordain women, and how women clergy have volunteered to go from traditional diocese to traditional diocese performing liturgical acts simply to force broadness on everybody (as strange as it sounds…and by the way, no pun intended when I used "broadness!"). What has happened is that broadness has become itself the test of orthodoxy, and rather than broadness being a term describing varying outlooks, it has become a clearly defined outlook itself, and anyone disagreeing with this rigid "broad" outlook has long been forced out of Western Anglicanism. Of course, this means that "broadness" is just as narrow as any other outlook within Anglicanism; it just so happens that the broad party is in charge.

Second, because of broadness becoming itself an outlook, in the postmodern age our "broadness" is leaving us with only "broad" people anyway. This is not England in the 17th century! The Episcopal Church is not the state religion, nor is it ubiqitous. In England in past days, yes you conformed, all views under one umbrella, because that was the Erastian nature of the Church of England. However, in postmodernity we have options, and plenty of them. A good Anglo-Catholic is soon going to realize that his or her vision of the Church is going to be met with bitter resistance, and rather than be both a bad Anglo-Catholic and bad Episcopalian he or she opts for Rome or Orthodoxy. An Evangelical eventually realizes that he or she is always fighting, and like the Anglo-Catholic, cannot be both a good evangelical and good Episcopalian. In most every community there are plenty of catholic and evangelical options, which means that if one passionately supports either of these options, he or she will likely eventually leave the Anglican Church. Now, there are (as I have mentioned) those who want broadness as an outlook, and it is only these who remain, and it is only these who can truly live out their vision in the Western Anglican Church. Of course, there are very few of these folks, and they seem to be getting older and not replacing themselves, while the opposite is true of evangelicals and catholics (evangelical churches and the Roman Catholic Church recently showed very positive growth). So in postmodernity the Anglican church is neither truly broad nor a good option for most Christians. This explains its decline and why, despite being against so-called exclusivity, its dogmatically broad vision excludes most people.

Even before I was a Christian I used to get pretty impatient with “professional activists.” You know who I am talking about, those whose whole being is tied to being angry at the status quo. And even if they win every battle they still find something to protest and something to be outraged over, and soon the average guy and gal just cannot comprehend the obsession and anger it takes to continue harping on an issue even after you have won.

Even though I am not a professional activist, nor do I want to be a perpetual protester, I feel as if I am constantly protesting too much. First, I am in a church that was born out of the Protestant reformation. Our protests were certainly valid in the 16th century, and we were, I believe, right to tell the corrupt papacy to get out of England (at least for the time being). However, hundreds of years later, even after various reforms by the Roman Catholic Church that have addressed our protests, our protests themselves have become a way of life.

Second, our reformation churches are so full of strife and protest that we have no common vision or mission. We have liberals who have protested so much over the last 30 years that many parts of the church are liberal, and openly embrace secular trends. These liberals have taken charge of many positions within the church and then the conservatives have become the protesters. Then suddenly conservatives get victory and then once again the liberals are protesting. This happens and will happen ad nauseum. And then something obvious happens: these churches decline. Someone we know once said “a house divided against itself cannot stand” and he is right. All of the infighting and and protesting resulting from radical conflicting visions have led to mainline protestant churches hemorrhaging members right before our eyes. It is like two boxers in the middle of a boxing match while the audience slowly leaves the arena, until nobody is even left, but the boxers are so entrenched in fighting that they don’t even notice that nobody even cares anymore.

I am guilty of this fighting as well. I have become so used to fighting that it has become a part of my Christian identity. I check the Anglican news sources daily, and am always outraged and ready to protest even more. I have (or rather, had) resolved myself that I would be ready to fight for the rest of my life, ready to continually protest the direction of my already protesting church. And then it suddenly dawned on me: we are going to be fighting forever, until that is congregations die (which they are) or the endowments run out (although endowments will be around even after their congregations have long died). And then I sighed and thought, “what a hell of a prospect! How utterly pathetic!” Our churches are in rapid decline, and I have to fight for our church to simply believe Jesus is the Son of God? This is postmodernity. There are many catholic options out there (Roman Catholic and Orthodox for example) and here I am using all my time and talents to convince the unconvincable that the basics of the classical catholic faith are true. For example, my local parish, St. Paul’s Chillicothe, Ohio, under a capable orthodox priest, recently joined the new Anglican network and already some members are making trouble (believe it or not, the most elderly in the congregation). They are calling meetings and promising vocal protests, rather than drive 15 miles to the next parish which is more liberal. So even after our protest (joining the network) which I thought would end the protesting for awhile, we have to deal with even more protesting. And now I am going to these meetings using up an evening defending the basics of the Christian faith, when I could be doing something useful (like blogging! ;-). There are people around us starving literally and spiritually and we are still debating issues that were settled, oh, around 1900 years ago!

I guess when your church is born out of protest, the result will always be the need for independence and protest, and the protestant churches have gotten their wish and then some. Protesting, arguing, and calling fancy expensive commissions who tell us what we already knew anyway are now accepted (and horribly dysfunctional) ways of operating that rarely get questioned. Recently the Anglican primate of Canada expressed concern that other parts of the communion were “meddling” in the business of Canadian Anglicans, and he said Canadian Anglicans should just do whatever they wanted. Fine. It is his right as a Western modernist Canadian. However, I (and the millions of others who have bailed from mainlines over the last 30 years) am tired of fighting, tired of saying “we believe in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” weekly yet belonging to a church that is looking more and more divided, particular, and novel. I am exploring the Roman Catholic Church, and we will see about that. Regardless of where I go, I am sick of fighting and sick of protesting, and the prospect of doing this for 60 more years makes me literally sick at my stomach. I do protest too much, and quite frankly, I am ready to leave that job for those who have the will and the time. When our whole reason for being is protest, and even our protests get protests, which then in turn get protests, we know we are in trouble.